Echoes of Egypt

Plenty of air? Plenty? Hey I don't know about your air consumption but the big guy in here uses some of it, and it's really really nearly depleted. So let's get out of this fraking boxes, alright? Hurry up bitbrain and tell me that there's no one out there. A slight trembling in the voice can't be overheard.

Well the plan is once the timer on the jack in the boxes team goes off we make our move it does seem to be that time. If we set off any alarms at least it will distract from the jack in the boxes team. So lets go. Night waits until his comm link lets him know the time is right and starts to move out. Night does his best to stay behind iKapa since he is the one with the stealth ability and the wire cutter to cut through the fence. The 3 team mates make their move on the complex, one fallowing the other doing their best not to get noticed. Well we will see what Hal can dig up on the location of our target and also if he lets us know when the alarm is tripped. Night is thankful for his goggles since they have been able to keep out any blowing dust out of his eyes as he move forward to the fence.

I am so glad that we are finale moving my dam legs were starting to cramp and I have sand everywhere and only god knows how it got that. Staying low behind her other two team mates and moving when they move not wanting to give there position away. Oh for the love of god Jack, Artemis would you stop having a argument with the glorified toaster..!! we will get you out of those boxes as fast as we can

Yeah sure, you start walking, cut through the fence, sneak past the guards and open the boxes in ...ahh wait
*looking again at the fill level of the oxygen container*
*clearly trembling voice, obviously near a panic attack*..9 minutes left now? Ok you try that, and I try to get out of here.

[OOC:
Perception Test to see how to open the box from the inside (force, magic, mechanics etc.)
Intuition 3 + Perception 2 : 2 Hits using normal vision, ultrasound and vision magnification ]


[OOC: I make up that there were 10 minutes left here (now 9), because I thought that's a good way to get the story moving again as we don't have any exact timings I felt free to imagine it .]

"Woah... hey, easy there big tree. If you breath too fast you'll be using up too much of your air." Shan says, doing the best she can to calm him down. She doubted that it would do any good at all to remind him that the locks were on a timer, and that they would open without any issues when the time came.
"With a little work from HAL, we will have no trouble at all making sure that you get out before it gets too stuffy in there... cool?" She continues, again noting that the computer translation of her "mental voice" was not doing an adequate job of keeping up with the emotion she was trying to convey. The words were all correct though, which was good.
"Hey, you speak for yourself, bird-brain. What if I want to see what a meta looks like with a blue face? Huh? You ever consider that?" HAL's feminite response filters in over Shan's local channel. Shan breathes a sigh of relief noting that HAL had at least enough sense to keep that comment between them. After a moment of calming down, Shan let out a little chuckle, enjoying the joke that it took her a few moments to understand.
Switching back to the local-net, Shan tried to continue with the soothing. "And, by the time we have gotten out of our boxes, dealt with any immediate threats, and stretched out our sore muscles, the other team should be just finished with putting their clothing on, and making sure that their guns are working properly..." Shan reacted with quite a bit of joy when she realized that the computer translator had done quite a good job of putting the correct inflections in her voice for the humor she was trying to convey. Perhaps they were programmed to accept the "homor" voice better than the "soothing" voice. - I am going to have to remember to speak with HAL about this... I am sure she will have some thoughts on how to optimize the "vocal" settings for the trode net translator. Shan thought to herself, in sort of a "note to self" format.
"Hey! Stop intruding on my nice comfortable silence!" HAL reprimanded Shan. - OOPS! Shan said back, surprised and embarassed that HAL had "heard" her note to self about the vocal translator computer.

Jack's observation of the inside of the containers is somewhat hindered by the lack of any actual light inside of them, and the astral was never any good for seeing physical details of the world, though it was still a rather colourful place, the fine details were always in the aura's and things of the astral plane rather than the physical which was dull and generally quite lifeless. However, just as his panic seems to seriously set in the containers all start to pop their latches in almost perfect sequence, though they don't automatically pop the lids wide open (as that would be too obvious a give away in case some one was looking) they did at least open a crack, and were now quite easy to simply push open. The downside to all this however, was that the plan was for Doc to be here well before this to let everyone out, something he's been over due for by a good 20 minutes or so. Then again, that possibility had been foreseen given that he was faking a serious injury.

For the moment the team seems to be in a rather cramped room full of storage boxes made up mostly of non perishable food supplies, canned goods, spare archaeological tools, spare gas canisters for portable stoves and other assorted (and similar) equipment. Beyond that however the room seems to be rather empty and devoid of life. Hal even reports that she can't 'see' any electronic surveillance equipment in the room, meaning the team should be able to get out without being noticed just yet.


The team outside the fence meanwhile, seems to manage to make it to the perimeter without difficulty, and the presence of the expected level of security seems rather diminished, though that likely has something to do with the earlier distraction which seems to still have a few security assets buzzing about the interior of the complex rather than the perimeter. Then again there was that mention of watcher spirits and security drones...

Not being precisely prepared for the actual popping of the locks, Shan flapped her wings somewhat in surprise when it did finally happen. The first thing she did was send a quick "Thought" message to HAL to find out what she had managed to uncover about the surroundings.
"Hey HAL, did you manage to get any data hits off any guards close by?" She "asked" via her trode net to HAL on her local channel. What she really wanted to know was if she would get her beak shot off for sticking it out of the crate or not. Probably not...
Shan, figuring that sticking her beak out, at the very least, would be safe enough, did just that. She stuck her beak out, and took a quick look around, comparing her visual input to what HAL had to say about the soliders in the area.

Perception Roll:
Intuition 5 + Perception 1 = 6 Dice; 2 hits

The member 'Gala' has done the following action : Dices roll

'D6' :

As the locks open Jack is in some kind of a hurry to get fresh air and forgets about any reconnaissance. About time these damn locks open up he says as he pushes the hatch open. He takes a deep breath and then it looks like sense hits him all of a sudden. He struggles with his numb externalities and leaves the box as silently as possible. Kneeling he watches the room as he sends a message over the commlink The boxes opened up, looks like we are in some kind of storage room, where are you people?.

[OOC: Perception 2 + Intuition 3 - Sustained Spell Increase Reflexes 2: 3 Dice, 0 Hits

Turning Ultrasound vision on
]

"Hold on, I'm taking a peak right now..." Shan says in response, still just letting her beak stick out of the box. The air out there was most definitely fresh, and at this moment, it was tasting quite sweet.

iKapa makes the final cuts on the fence, as this is happening Night continues to look around for drones. Drake I wish I had astral sight these geeking watchers are a pain. Night thinks as he keeps his head down. Once the fence is cut the team starts to move out towards the buildings at the dig site. Ok time to start to look over the site to find our target. I hope Hal gets back to us on her whereabouts that will make this run go alot faster and the faster we make this run the less likely we will have to deal with massive casualties on our side. Night fallows iKapa as he moves out from the fence the team is starting with a door to door search until info from Hals hack of the cameras and maybe a few drone sensors to find the target is relayed to the team. This door to door will work only thing is it is more likely to get us noticed so I hope Hal can hack the info we need FAST like really fast or this run is going south fast.

Seeing nothing of an immediate threat, and without any feedback from HAL just yet, Shan figures that there is no other option at the moment but to hop out and start on the hard part. She flicks her head up a little, knocking back the lid of the box with her beak, and sticks her head out for a more careful look.
- Nothing dangerous... yet. She thinks to herself, flapping a bit and hopping out of the box. She turns around and grabs her black longcoat with her beak, dragging that out behind her. Now, in a larger space, with room to move around a bit, Shan changes in to human form. She stands up, and stretches a bit, getting the un-natural human muscles to respond to command again. Shan then turns and surveys the room with her human eyes, still not noticing any immediate threats, she reaches down in to the box and pulls out her gun case. Looking at her teammates, and the astonished expression on their faces, Shan realizes that she needs to grab the longcoat as well. She quickly picks that up, pulls it over her shoulders, and zips up the front, closing off her body from the view of her teammates.
"Oops..." She says with a shrug. Despite the "blaze" aspect of her actions, she really did forget to cloth herself. Afterall, her natural state is not socially required to wear extra covering. She turns back to her gun case, puts it on top of the box she had just inhabited, and opens it up, assembling her Ranger Arms in a smooth but highly practiced maneuver. In short order, Shan has her Ranger Arms assembled and strapped over her shoulders, ready for the action that she and the team would very shortly be facing.
"We ready?" She asks, looking at the rest of the team. She figured that her gun assmebly, despite the smooth and efficient practice that she obviously had, was likely the most time consuming activity of the group.

Jack, still crouching, sees the other boxes opening up. Although he knows about shapeshifters the (ultrasound-) view of an owl flapping and hopping out of a box still is awkward and makes him smile. The smile becomes an open mouth as the bird changes into a (quite attractive) young lady who starts to assemble a rifle, completely naked. After 2 minutes starring Jack gathers himself and just wants to ask if she has brought something to wear, as she reaches back into the box and dons a long coat. Jack shakes his head grinning and checks his own equipment.

Yeah I'm ready. he answers the former owl as he weighs the tomahawk in his hand and then fixates it again at the belt holster. So anyone has an Idea where exactly in the camp we are? Jack starts moving around in the room.

[OOC: Great, an indian shaman without infiltration, who the "§!$& build this character ;-):

Infiltration role Agility 3 + Infiltration 0 + Defaulting -1 = 2d6 (1 Hit, Glitch!)]

::click....Hiss as fresh air moves into the box. Aretmis shifts slowly bringing her weapon to in front of her ready to aim at any targets. She checks the link to make sure it is ready to go. Then she counts to 30 slowly. Listening intently for any surpised exclamations or immediate gun fire. After the count of 30 she shifts slowly using her left hand to push the lid container out of the room and she scans from left and right and back again checking her arc of fire. Seeing no hostiles and no one seems to be shooting her from behind she carefully extracts herself from the box into a quiet forward tuck and roll sh she can reorient herself on the section of the room she hadnt scanned before.

::Whispered:: "Room is all clear no one ready to give us lead poisoning, I suggest move about slowly get circulation going and make sure all equipment is where it should be and not still in your crates."

With her weapon assembled, Shan looked up at the rest of the team, throwing the strap of the high powered rifle over her shoulder. She shrugs it into place, indicating a "comfortable" spot where she likes to leave it. Shan then loads her pockets with some ammo before closing the case in front of her. She carefully *clicks* the latches in to place, checking it once to make sure that it was properly closed.
Shan then picks up the case and inspects it a little, with an almost wondering stare. She takes the case in one hand and walks forward to join up with the rest of the group, her rifle hanging from her right shoulder, and at an easy access length down her side. She looks like she is comfortable with it's use.
"I'm ready. You ready?" She says, grinning. It was blood time.

GM Notes: Finally found a good photo of the area which you can find Here
Present team layout:
Team 1: Entering the compound
iKapa: Melee Adept (Presently played by ???)
William: Face (Presently played by Sureal)
Night (Scawire)

Team 2: Inside the compound
Shan (Gala)
Jack: Mage (Played by Stampede)
Hal: AI (NPCed by Gala)
Artemis: Rigger (Played by Quicklift)

MIA:
Doc (Played by ???)




Hal's long labour finally pays off in the form of at least some information, and Shan soon notices her comlink has picked up a new audio channel.

Voice 1: "This is team one, everything from the crash site has been secured, resuming patrol. Over"

Voice 2:
"Roger team one."

"Team two, and three, assist with the patrol of fence line and then return to your posts. Over."

Voice 3:
"Team three copies."

Voice 4:
"Team two copies."

Voice 5:
"Be advised, drone 3 seems to be acting up again, I'm going to pull one away from it's position to confirm."


As everyone gathers their gear and gets out of the containers, there seems to be little other activity about in the storage room, or even around it as far as sound is concerned. If there's anyone outside, you at least can't presently hear them, and unfortunately this particular building, or room lacks any windows. Fortunately, thanks to a somewhat dusty air conditioning unit, it's not stiffing hot either, unlike the way the containers were starting to get earlier as they were baking in the afternoon sun out in the desert. The heat however had left the team inside the building feeling a touch dehydrated, though since they came out in some sort of supply and storage room, there was an entire pallet of bottles of water sitting near one of the shelving racks.

Meanwhile William, Night and iKapa have managed to breach the first fence, and so far seem not to have tripped off any alarms in doing so, and they seem set on breaching the second, inner fence with equal ease. Doing so would then put them near a set of large tents.

On the whole everything seems to be going according to plan, more or less, except that Doc still hasn't shown up and he was supposed to originally let the team in the containers out as soon as it was safe. Indeed, no word has been heard from him since he was taken away by the security group and that alone may not bode well. The radio traffic now pouring in thanks to Hal however seems to indicate nothing amiss, just typical guard patrols going back to what they were doing now that the day's excitement is finally dealt with.



The blue bar through the fence is where team 1 is presently infiltrating the compound.
The yellow box is the building team 2 is presently in
The red squares are guard posts
The long Green Square is the landing strip
The large black boxes in the lower right corner are a mix of employee housing, 'control center' and other related facilities. These are the most permanent looking buildings of all of them, featuring actual concrete walls.
The boxes in the upper left are temporary buildings, large (and small) tents and other assorted things where the majority of the dig staff are quartered.
The large white + is where the main dig is located

"Umm... guys..." Shan starts to say, pulling her gun around in front of her and temporarilly forgetting that that action might be a little upsetting to anyone standing within 30 degrees of the direction she was pointing her gun. She is cut off by some of the chatter that had found it's way onto her commlink, but quickly realizes that the extra noise is actually a good thing, not bad. Quickly, Shan looks to her other teammates and starts to speak.
"I think we need to move. Now. Fast. The other patrols are about to start to reinforce the perimeters. Now." She says, again, not really giving any significant time between her words. She moves quickly over to the door of the tent and leans down near the ground, looking for a way for her to peer out without being obviously discovered. She knew she needed to get into position to be useful, and now.

- HAL, Shan thought over her net to HAL, trying to get her attention. - I am about to start sighting and shooting. Things are going to get exciting. Think you can put together a map of the area, and keep track of where the "Fleshies" are out there for me? I really don't want to get caught from behind... She said to HAL.
Shan didn't really wait for a response from HAL, since she knew that a task like that would be quite impressive for someone without eyes. HAL, of course, probably had better eyes than Shan, but she would have to bounce from one camera to the next to start putting together the feeds she needed, and that would be quite a difficult task. It would be easier for a metahuman with binoculars. That's why Snipers usually had "spotters" with them. But HAL had proven to be quite adept at completing some of the tasks that would have been much easier for a metahuman. So far, Shan was rather impressed with HAL's capacity, and Shan hoped that HAL would pull through on this one as well. Knowing where the threats were would be a HUGE advantage for Shan, especially since she is not in a high-ground position, like she normally prefers.
Shan lifted the bottom corner of the tent, a few steps away from the door and put one eye to the ground to peer out, looking in an almost 180 degree sweep, as close as her body position would allow her. Any up close metahumans would just be feet for her, but she could still identify them. The further away, the more likely she would be able to see their whole body.

Perception (5+1=6) 3 hits

Shan catalogued what she saw in her memory, paying strict attention to who/what was closest to the door. She could just cut through the wall of the tent, if necessary, but doors are more convenient when they are not guarded. Shan hoped that HAL was also cataloging what Shan was seeing, since this is probably the easiest of the potential feeds for HAL to use. Hopefully not the only one though.

"Based on the information we have, we have three potential areas to cover to locate our primary and secondary goals. Based on the current time We may want to carefully check the tents here. We may be able to get uniforms that may help us to blend in. IF we'r really lucky we can discover our target.

The two other areas require us to cover a lot of ground that is visible. We will probably end up in the permanent buildings since that is where the good doctor is probably as well as any artifacts of true value are.

This is but a suggestion unless anyone has a better plan." ::Artemis looks over the group as she finishes a bottle of water.::

Jack positions himself right behind Shan but looks in the direction of the tent "door". What do you see out there? Any hint on where the rest of the team is? If I remember the satelite photo correctly, there should be roughly 4 camps around the dig site. Can you guess in which we are from what you are seeing?

"I would love to take our time like your suggesting, Artemis, really I would." Shan whispers into her Commlink, letting the local-net that the team had set up pick her voice up and transmit it to her group. "But we don't have time for that. Not if we want our other team to survive long enough to keep us alive. The guards are closing in on them right now." Shan say, just as she gets her eyes close enough to the ground to start seeing out.

As the team continues to discuss their next step Hal comes through with and overlay for Shan though it's perhaps not quite what she was hoping for. With the limited mesh network around the camp, and a fair bit of it encrypted for security measures it's taking Hal a lot longer to pull up useful information than it would in say.. a major city. The end result being that a few solid contacts start popping up around the camp's perimeter, along with a few more scattered through the camp, but the exact positioning is a little sketchy and hops around a fair bit in many cases.

The tent the group is presently in however at least seems clear for the time being, while there is still no word from either Doc, or the second team at this point in time. That said one of the vague dots seems to be heading for their very tent right now....

"HAL, you're a genious!" Shan exclaims over the local net.
"Well, what else did you expect?" HAL responds. Shan decided not to really respond to that, as she noticed a "bogey" coming their way.
"Hey, uh, guys? We've got company coming our way. And we need to get a move-on to make sure that our other team doesn't get a terminal case of "Dead" before they even know what's coming!" Shan said, again over the local net.
"We've got to get kickin'!" She said, standing up and going over to stand a few paces behind the tent door. Shan pulled her rifle around in front of her, and held it up toward the tent door.
"Ok, one of you with Pistols or a Semi-Auto want to start the action? That flap is going to be opened in a few moments." She checked her "overlay" for the jumpy progress that the colored icon was making toward her, and waited for the rest of the team to get in position.

Night keeps moving with his team towards the first set of buildings to sweep the building for personal or items of interest. He hears the comm chatter and decides to voice in to let the other team know what is up. "Team two is moving past the fence and towards building in the South west section of the ground. Thanks for the heads up on activity let me know if we id our target."

While Shan awaits a response from her team mates, Hal's further successes in infiltrating the local systems becomes ever more clear as more icons start to pop upon the map overlay. The building in the far lower right suddenly displays the icon of a satellite dish and from there a number of new channels are tapped into, though most seem to be typical matrix feeds. Music videos, Music channels, movie station feeds, Trid shows and a few other channels that are presently not transmitting anything at all but are merely available. The building above it soon after pops an indicator for a longer ranged radio tower, though by and large it too seems to be mostly dormant of activity at this time of night.

The dot moving towards the tent however continues to approach.


(Night, for your information, please post both a stealth and perception roll)